It feels like everyone’s in a pressure cooker in this country Born in New-York City of Haitian parents, cellist, banjo player and singer songwriter Leyla McCalla settled in New-Orleans in 2010. As time goes by, Leyla McCalla’s music is digging ever so deeper into the kaleidoscopic cultural diversity of the Deep South. ... [Continue Reading]
blues
Songhoy Blues: Music in Exile
Influenced by desert blues legends like Ali Farka Touré (1939 - 2006) or Khaira Arby and growing up listening to tapes of BB King, John Lee Hooker or Jimi Hendrix, the four members of Malian band Songhoy Blues play a raw and energetic mix of blues, rock and R&B on a straightforward guitars, bass and drums formula. Released ... [Continue Reading]
Mark Lanegan Band: Phantom Radio
Now aged 50, American alt-rock singer songwriter Mark Lanegan is an extremely prolific recording artist and attempting to frame his musical output in terms of style relating to a particular period in his discography would inevitably lead to over simplification. All his various musical influences seem however to coalesce in his ... [Continue Reading]
Bombino: Tar Hani
It was in 2008 while filming a documentary in Niger focusing on the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara and Sahel regions of Africa that American film maker Ron Wyman first heard the music of Bombino on a car stereo. Our driver had one cassette - Bombino’s music. We listened to it over and over for about two weeks! It never got old ... [Continue Reading]
Hurray for the Riff Raff: St. Roch Blues
Originally from the Bronx in New York, singer-songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra left home at the age of 17 to travel westwards across America before settling in New Orleans. Perfecting her craft busking and singing with various bands while immersed in a city rebuilding itself in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Alynda Lee Segarra ... [Continue Reading]
Tamikrest: Tisnant an Chatma
A lot of the music coming from contemporary Malian bands and singers today has this compelling and hypnotic flow that invariably captures the listener’s attention, and the music of young Tuareg band Tamikrest is no exception. Formed in 2006 and influenced by the traditional Malian “desert blues” style, Tamikrest also integrate a ... [Continue Reading]
Boubacar Traoré & Vincent Bucher: Mondeou
Self-taught on the guitar, Malian singer songwriter Boubacar Traoré’s unique style is mainly based on the playing of the kora, the 21-string west-African harp. Having also integrated in his technique phrases and inflections from the Mississipi Delta bluesmen, Boubacar Traoré is, along with the late Ali Farka Touré, one of ... [Continue Reading]